While PC market rebounds, Apple slips into 5th place in US

Holiday sales in the US and elswhere sparked big growth in the PC market for …

Early estimates for fourth-quarter PC sales are in, painting a much rosier picture than the past several quarters. Even Dell, which had a significant drop in market share for 2009, managed to turn in a slight increase in unit shipments for the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, HP moves into the top spot in the US, while Apple, despite showing an increase in units shipped, moved down to number five. Dell also took a hit worldwide, being bumped from the number two spot by Acer.

In the US, PC shipments were up 25 percent for the quarter, and about 6 percent overall for the entire year. That contrasts sharply with the doom and gloom expected for the year as an effect of the recession, with huge holiday sales preventing the year from ending on a sour note.

HP has succeeded in solidifying its lead over previous sales king Dell. The company had tremendous fourth quarter growth of 45.5 percent, earning the company nearly 30 percent of the US market. HP's 15 percent growth in unit shipments for the year puts it in the number one spot for all of 2009, at 26.9 percent share.

Second-place Dell continued to slide, meanwhile, even while recording a small positive growth in shipments for the fourth quarter. It has dipped below a quarter of the US PC market for the first time in a very long time. It finished the year down 11.3 percent in shipments, to hold 24.5 percent of the market for 2009.

Acer and Toshiba both saw huge gains for the fourth quarter, recording unit shipments gains of 33.4 percent and a whopping 71.1 percent respectively. Acer, most well known for its line of inexpensive netbook and "nettop" machines, solidified itself in the number three spot in the US. Toshiba, meanwhile, pushed itself past Apple to grab the number four spot in the fourth quarter. Both companies also had healthy double-digit growth in shipments for the year as well.

"Shipment growth was largely driven by low-priced consumer mobile PCs, both in regular notebooks and [netbooks]," Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. "As economic weakness continued, buyers became extremely price sensitive. Low-priced PCs were good enough for many average consumers." The result is that some manufacturers made what Gartner describes as "damaging price cuts" to lure consumers.

The story was quite different for Apple. The preliminary results show that the company had healthy growth in the fourth quarter, with unit shipments up 27 percent. But that barely made a difference against the huge gains of Toshiba; despite edging its market share up ever so slightly to 7.4 percent, it fell to fifth place in the US. However, Apple has still commanded premium pricing throughout the economic downturn, keeping its profits intact.

"Apple does not have much presence in the professional market where the growth was still slow," Kitagawa told Ars. "Therefore, Apple did not have a negative impact from the weak professional market." Most growth was fueled from the consumer market, where Apple already has a strong presence, she said.

"Apple's profits from Mac sales are one of the best among all PC vendors," Kitagawa continued. "While enjoying good profits, there is no need for them to cut prices."

On the global scene, shipments were up 18.6 percent for the fourth quarter, again fueled by aggressive price cuts aimed squarely at cash-strapped consumers. Growth came mainly from the US and a recovering Asia. Europe, Middle East, and Africa are trailing somewhat, due in part to a later onset of recession conditions. Shipments were up just under 4 percent for the year; again, a much better result than what was predicted from earlier this year.

For the fourth quarter, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba all had impressive gains in unit shipments. Dell again managed a small 5 percent bump in units, though its market share dropped slightly. The rest of the top five worlwide PC vendors managed small gains in market share, though nothing significant enough to shake up the overall ranking.

For 2009, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba all had decent double-digit growth. The big upset came from Acer, which managed to post a 26 percent growth for the year to jump ahead of Dell as the number-two worldwide PC vendor. Dell turned in a lackluster 9.2 percent drop in shipments for 2009, moving down to number three.

"The market has weathered a storm which looks to be behind us," says Jay Chou, IDC research analyst. "But salvaging decreasing margins will soon become even more pertinent as one considers the long-term effects of holding market share at the cost of profitability. Without an effective strategy to convey a clear usage model and feature set tied to each segment, the market will inevitably continue down the slippery slope of 'good-enough' computing sold to the lowest bidder."

Note: The data used for this report comes from preliminary figures supplied by both Gartner and IDC. Figures for fourth quarter US, fourth quarter worldwide, and 2009 worldwide sales are averaged from Gartner and IDC data, though there were no major differences in those data sets. Figures for 2009 US PC sales were only provided by IDC.

Apple's market share for both 2009 and Q4 2009 are up. Picking out that Apple slipped into 5th place, an apparent negative, and putting that in the headline is unexpectedly sensationalist of Ars Technica. Even though HP, Acer and Toshiba outpaced Apple, Apple still outpaced the industry as a whole. I expect more reasonable headlines from Ars Technica.

If I'm reading the chart right, I think the HP and Dell labels are reversed on the line graph.

Dell's continued sales collapse is as spectacular as it is puzzling. For a long time now, IMHO, they have been the leader in design and aesthetics (18+ months) even compared with Apple. Maybe it's a pricing issue? I know Rollins bought a lot of market share with his Krazy Koupons sales strategy. My guess is that Dell is hemorraging business clients while gaining not quite as many high-end consumer clients; in the top segment they are fighting with Apple and it'll take a few more quarters at least before the newness of Win7 washes away the sustained RDF effect and draws some of the high-end buyers back to PC. We'll have to wait to see gross margins from HP and Dell to see if that's right.

It's really impressive that Apple maintained an increased market share when there was such massive growth in the PC side.

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Originally posted by chobit:Apple's market share for both 2009 and Q4 2009 are up. Picking out that Apple slipped into 5th place, an apparent negative, and putting that in the headline is unexpectedly sensationalist of Ars Technica. Even though HP, Acer and Toshiba outpaced Apple, Apple still outpaced the industry as a whole. I expect more reasonable headlines from Ars Technica.

If you think that's sensationlist, God forbid you should ever read OMW.

Originally posted by Karoch Sharon:If I'm reading the chart right, I think the HP and Dell labels are reversed on the line graph.

Looks that way to me. Thought Dell was way down and HP way up.

Apple is doing great, but its odd to see that even with such a hefty retail increase they lose their position due to corporate sales of HP and Toshiba. Its completely valid to point that out in the title. Apples sales are pointed clearly at the consumer market and they are doing well there but its a small piece of the pie.

What makes people think that this is an article about Apple? It talks about all of the major manufacturers, and it's in Chipster, not Infinite Loop. Granted, Chris Foresman is a Mac guy, but that's a pretty weak link.

Look: Netbook and other "secondary PCs" should not be considdered part of the computer marketshare, or if they are, they need to be listed seperately. Counting netbooks as part of the general marketshare is like saying Windows mobile phones should count in that sum as well... or Linux set top boxes and HTPCs...

VERY few people who have netbooks have only that computer, and most of those who do, regret it. Even Dell claimed HUGE NetBook returns when netbooks were purchased by customers to be primary machines...

Next, marketshare is based on unit sales per period, but in no way takes into account user base. Macs are owned typically YEARS longer than equivalent PC hardware, often maintaining twice the lifespan, and even then after 5-6 years, sell for significant portions of their original purchase price (compared to a Dell which might be worth 25% of it's price after 1 year). Failure to correlate unit sales to browser share or other utilization metrics (again discounting netBooks from this total somehow, which is harder to do), is a complete fallicy.

The only chart that's really important there is the run chart showing progress over the quarters. Numbers go up and down all the time, and the media loves it, since they can make big stories out of it. "The Job Market is Recovering since numbers are UP this month!" "The Job Market is Doomed since numbers are DOWN this month!"

If you look at the big picture (well, a 2yr picture), I'd say Apple needs to pat itself on the back. With a downward economy, they held steady. HP needs to keep doing what it's doing. Acer needs to hand out some bonuses to its employees. And whoever runs Dell...you need to fire somebody.

Originally posted by ayelao:EDIT: Ah, OK, yeah, I think the charts are slightly mixed up, which led me to believe that 2008 vs 2009's market share left Apple in 4th place overall, but in 5th place for Q4.

No, you are correct. Apple is in 5th place in US sales for Q4'09, while for the whole year of 2009 they are just ahead of Toshiba based on IDC's numbers (we don't have comparable numbers from Gartner to do a comparison/average).

These rankings are usually done on a quarterly basis, but since we had some year-end data, we thought it was worth including. Apple's slight dip in Q4 wasn't enough to push it down to 5th for the year, but it was pretty close. And to think, Apple was number three in Q3'08. I'm looking forward to Apple's official results (being announced on Jan 25) as well as what 2010 brings.

Originally posted by zelannii:Next, marketshare is based on unit sales per period, but in no way takes into account user base. Macs are owned typically YEARS longer than equivalent PC hardware, often maintaining twice the lifespan, and even then after 5-6 years,

Do you have any data to back this up? In my experience it's mostly enthusiasts/gamers that upgrade fairly often (many of which build and aren't represented BTW), while your average Joe keeps using the same PC until it simply dies or becomes unusable.

Thraxen, yes, wondered about that too. If it were true, it should show up in stuff like replacement policies by companies and academia. Is it really true that they replace Macs every 6 years, and Windows machines every 3 years? Why would they do that in any case, since there is no hardware difference between a Mac and a Windows machine, they are all just x86 using the exact same parts. So why is one supposed to last longer?

Writing this on an old AMD 1.2Ghz Athlon, with 512 megs memory, running OpenBox on Debian Squeeze, and its pretty fast and runs just fine. At least as usable as Macs of the same vintage.

It would be really interesting to get some proper numbers on lifespan in use. For one thing, it would shed some light on how much of the Apple sales are sales to the existing base, and how much is replacement.

Echoing Hinton and tenuki, how exactly is Apple losing a place down at the 7-8% marketshare point bigger news than that Dell over the last year basically lost as much marketshare as Apple has? Hell Apple gained marketshare. Or how about that Toshiba has gained 50% on their marketshare from last year?

Absolutely terrible headline. Not every bit of tech market news has to lead with Apple, you guys are aware of that?

Originally posted by chobit:Apple's market share for both 2009 and Q4 2009 are up. Picking out that Apple slipped into 5th place, an apparent negative, and putting that in the headline is unexpectedly sensationalist of Ars Technica. Even though HP, Acer and Toshiba outpaced Apple, Apple still outpaced the industry as a whole. I expect more reasonable headlines from Ars Technica.

Wow, this headline is so misleading I thought I was reading Engadget. Way to troll the iFans. You'd think by this headline that Apple marketshare was slipping, when in fact its growing. "Nicely" done ars, nice. sigh.

Originally posted by Thraxen:Do you have any data to back this up? In my experience it's mostly enthusiasts/gamers that upgrade fairly often (many of which build and aren't represented BTW), while your average Joe keeps using the same PC until it simply dies or becomes unusable.

Muahhahah... but Avg Joe has a Windoze PC which only takes 9 months to become spyware clogged! (j/k)

Originally posted by Thraxen:Do you have any data to back this up? In my experience it's mostly enthusiasts/gamers that upgrade fairly often (many of which build and aren't represented BTW), while your average Joe keeps using the same PC until it simply dies or becomes unusable.

Muahhahah... but Avg Joe has a Windoze PC which only takes 9 months to become spyware clogged! (j/k)

Originally posted by Thraxen:Do you have any data to back this up? In my experience it's mostly enthusiasts/gamers that upgrade fairly often (many of which build and aren't represented BTW), while your average Joe keeps using the same PC until it simply dies or becomes unusable.

Muahhahah... but Avg Joe has a Windoze PC which only takes 9 months to become spyware clogged! (j/k)

My sister in law's netbook only took four months.

Well my second cousin's nephew's friend's turtle's adopted owner's grandma said that her new "lap top personal computer" was infected in six minutes!

Who cares? People who use Micro soft are to dumb to know that bill and the boys have screwed them for years, market share is a statistic slanted by many factors. How computers are used and by whom is not taken into account, making the assumptions that many poorly informed users make, but it must be true because so and so said it, wrong. People who are to lazy to do their own thinking deserve what they get, remember numbers can be made to indicate anything the numbers takers want them to. Assuming that numbers takers are completely honest marks the person who trusts the statistics as both simplistic and lazy minded the perfect description of a Microsoft fan boy.

I'd like to see this data as compares to 2006 and 2007. That would paint a more interesting picture of how things are going, in my opinion. Comparing pairs of data is nice, but what's the larger trend?

Originally posted by zelannii:Look: Netbook and other "secondary PCs" should not be considdered part of the computer marketshare, or if they are, they need to be listed seperately. Counting netbooks as part of the general marketshare is like saying Windows mobile phones should count in that sum as well... or Linux set top boxes and HTPCs...

VERY few people who have netbooks have only that computer, and most of those who do, regret it. Even Dell claimed HUGE NetBook returns when netbooks were purchased by customers to be primary machines...

That's ridiculous. You can't randomly decide that certain classes of PCs don't count as computers. Who gives a fuck if it isn't a primary computer, by that logic you would have to disqualify all laptops as a non-trivial percentage of them are "secondary" PCs.

If it runs a general-purpose computing OS and the same apps as a bog-standard desktop, it's a computer.

Smartphones obviously don't fall in there yet (but are rapidly on their way and likely will in another few years). Nor do Linux Set-Top boxes. There is no reason why a HTPC wouldn't count as a computer, the ability to run other applications is pretty much the distinguishing feature between a HTPC and a dedicated set-top box.

Originally posted by jwbaker:This is why Apple and its fans always uses the absurd "retail market share" figure. Everybody else orders their PCs by mail, while Apple is the only maker with a chain of stores.

Retail Sales does not mean retail store it means consumer sales versus corporate. And no, not everyone orders PCs online - many are sold from Best Buy and other big box stores - far more than Mac sell through stores. Apple has the only corporate stores - but many more PCs are sold through big box stores. And don't forget the Microsoft stores.

I know that many people would rather see the performance race continue, but I'm enjoying the new low-cost medium-performance paradigm. I can get a lot more tinkering done on a fixed budget.

In related news, I finally got mythtv running on my sheevaplug...

That is a great point. For many years GM - even now - GM had a larger market share than Lexus. Only GM lost 100's of billions in the past 20 years and Lexus made 100's of billions. As a business goes - would you rather invest in something that returns 3% or something that returns 37%? Profit margin is far more important than market share. At the end of the day Apple sells less but has billions in profits to show.

Originally posted by Thomcarl:Who cares? People who use Micro soft are to dumb to know that bill and the boys have screwed them for years, market share is a statistic slanted by many factors. How computers are used and by whom is not taken into account, making the assumptions that many poorly informed users make, but it must be true because so and so said it, wrong. People who are to lazy to do their own thinking deserve what they get, remember numbers can be made to indicate anything the numbers takers want them to. Assuming that numbers takers are completely honest marks the person who trusts the statistics as both simplistic and lazy minded the perfect description of a Microsoft fan boy.

Yup all 94% of us must be idiots your right. I mean we are the ones putting our systems together and customizing them. But yes we are the idiots.

Originally posted by zelannii:Look: Netbook and other "secondary PCs" should not be considdered part of the computer marketshare, or if they are, they need to be listed seperately. Counting netbooks as part of the general marketshare is like saying Windows mobile phones should count in that sum as well... or Linux set top boxes and HTPCs...

VERY few people who have netbooks have only that computer, and most of those who do, regret it. Even Dell claimed HUGE NetBook returns when netbooks were purchased by customers to be primary machines...

Next, marketshare is based on unit sales per period, but in no way takes into account user base. Macs are owned typically YEARS longer than equivalent PC hardware, often maintaining twice the lifespan, and even then after 5-6 years, sell for significant portions of their original purchase price (compared to a Dell which might be worth 25% of it's price after 1 year). Failure to correlate unit sales to browser share or other utilization metrics (again discounting netBooks from this total somehow, which is harder to do), is a complete fallicy.

I don't see why Netbooks or HTPCs shouldn't count toward market share. If it's a general purpose computer that you can install whatever software you want on, it should count in my opinion. If it's a set-top box that isn't meant for general purpose use, then I wouldn't count it, but a netbook or HTPC with a fully functional Linux or Windows OS should count. Likewise, I wouldn't count the iPhone because it's meant to only run manufacturer-approved applications, but I would count the Nokia N900 because it's designed to allow any compatible applications you want to run on it (which includes a lot of standard desktop Linux applications with relatively little modification).

As you say, market share and user base are two different things. This article is about market share (which is somewhat easier to measure). For market share, it's probably most useful to break it down by individual manufacturers as this article does, while user base is more interesting to analyze by operating system rather than manufacturer. Computer manufacturers care mostly about how many computers they're selling now (market share), not how many are still in use (user base). Software developers are more likely to care about the size of the user base, but they don't really need to care whether their software is running on an Acer or a Dell, they care about whether it's worthwhile to support multiple operating systems.

@Kasoroth: The real metric is if a device delays or denies the purchase of a PC.

So if an iPhone causes a person who would normally have bought an HP laptop to not buy one, it's competing despite not being normally compatible.

I mean, your description of "general purpose computer that you can install whatever software you want on," definitely applies to the iPhone at least as much as it applies to the Mac because you are always constrained by software that is available for your OS.

Rejecting the iPhone due to the app store is stupid, any more than rejecting a Mac because it doesn't have Autocad or Premiere.